


White

by JoJo



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: picfor1000, Episode Related, Episode s04e5 Kupu'eu (Fallen Hero), M/M, Navy, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 10:03:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10511529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: This is what would happen if he lost Steve





	

**Author's Note:**

> for this year's picfor1000 challenge on LJ - picture prompt [here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/rutover/9460599621/)

On the morning of Billy Harrington’s burial and wake, Danny picked Chin up in the Camaro.

The day was going to be long, tough, and complicated, and he wasn’t looking forward to it one bit.

“Sharp,” Chin commented, nodding at Danny’s black suit/blue shirt combo. He himself wore a crisp white shirt, buttoned fiercely under his funeral tie. A very unusual look for Chin Ho Kelly, and one that made Danny’s stomach churn more than it was already. 

They chatted of things other than death and interment all the way to Pearl Harbor/Hickham.

Danny didn’t see Steve until they took their places. 

To be honest, all he could focus on for a while was Billy Harrington gazing at everybody from a photographic portrait, oddly twinkle-eyed and challenging. Danny still couldn’t believe Billy hadn’t had designs on Catherine all along, however sub-conscious. Same as he still couldn’t believe Steve had been as cool with the whole arrangement as he’d claimed. 

Not that it mattered anymore one way or the other.

Then, “Ouch,” he said under his breath.

Because McGarrett was in blinding white, dress uniform epic against the back drop of the ocean and the blue sky. And Steve looked so... other. He looked about as Navied up as he could possibly be, and so pure, so fucking beautiful, that Danny felt his throat close up.

And that wasn’t what was supposed to be making his throat close up.

“I feel like we’ve been here before,” Chin murmured, sliding a finger under his collar. Which they had, he and Danny and Kono, in their formal civvies, watching Steve watch the Navy bury Freddie Hart. McGarrett had been in dress blues that time, probably closer to cracking than they’d seen him before or since.

“I hate this shit,” Danny muttered back. He did, too, even though it wasn’t so very different to how cops buried their own. Emphasis on service, valor, and sacrifice. Which, while it was absolutely how it should be, and he wouldn’t actually have it any different, always made Danny want to punch a wall somewhere. Because, hello? Normal, human families? In pieces? The heightened respect for lives that could just as heroically have been spent running a shrimp truck or staring down a microscope really ticked him off. There really wasn’t any way to make violent death after a life in uniform more palatable, or any need to make it more deserving of reverence. 

Although, yeah. There also kind of was.

Chin glanced discreetly sideways at him.

“The white,” Danny said, “I hate the white.”

“Yeah,” Chin said, surprising him. “Me too.” Then he nudged him. “Take it easy, brah.”

Danny tried, but it was hard.

Because funerals, however homespun or reverential, just sucked. No two ways about it. And this one in particular. For there was no getting away from the fact that it could easily be Steve staring out at them from down there. Some handsome studio portrait that would show so much of him, and so little.

The thought was like an icy hand gripping Danny’s heart.

There they’d be, sitting in the front row on the quayside, and some other guy would be in white, and there’d be the saluting, and the litany of heroism and the fucking volley of gunfire. And then – Jesus God – there’d be the folded flag. Which they’d give to Mary McGarrett. Because Danny would be outside all this. He’d be nobody.

“Hey.” Chin was quiet, but scolding. “Would you stop it? Not going to happen, man.” 

Danny took a deep breath of the salty air. 

He wished fervently that things would get back to their insane version of normal soon.

But maybe he should have been careful what he wished for, because on the way back from the wake, Steve drove. They dropped Catherine who wasn’t doing well and wanted to be alone, then Chin, and then went back to Steve’s and Steve, all bossy and no fun at all, said Danny should stay for a while because he shouldn’t be driving.

Which all got kind of ridiculous because Steve immediately went to find a bottle of something else.

At the wake Chin and Danny had stuck together because they weren’t family and they weren’t Navy. Danny had hated every second of it, except maybe for the Irish whiskey. Catherine had cried on Steve’s shoulder, Joe White had said something Danny couldn’t hear that really bothered Steve, and then, to top it all, there’d been the ‘The Minstrel Boy’, and Danny was back to the portrait and the salutes and the fucking volley of gunfire.

“You know what, Steven?” he said, hand executing an irritated gesture from head to toe as they stood out on the lanai in the cool. “I hate the white.”

Steve looked down at himself, puzzled. “You hate the white?” 

“Well, no. I love the white. You look ridiculously hot in the white. But I fucking hate the white.”

“How much have you had?” Steve asked, concerned.

At least two too many, Danny thought.

“OK,” he said, punchy, “so I don’t want the flag.” 

There was a shocked silence and then Steve said,“What?”

Danny’s heart began to canter and his voice began to get out of control. 

“Ever,” he said loudly, and jabbed Steve in the chest with a finger. “All right, you idiot? I mean seriously I have zero interest in getting the flag. But at the same time,” – jab – “you gotta know,” – jab – “I want the fucking flag.”

“Hey,” Steve said. “Hey.” He’d gone all pained and serious. “You can have it. You can.” 

And his eyes looked like the ocean and the sun was setting behind them and he was blindingly white, like a fucking angel.

“God I really hate you,” Danny said, stumbling forward into his chest.

They did sunset kissing.

And if Danny had thought this day was going to be long, tough, and complicated, it was really nothing like the ones that were yet to come.


End file.
